Pet Sematary

by Stephen King

“It was horrible, all right. Worse than you can ever imagine. Louis, we watched her degenerate day by day, and there was nothing anyone could do. She was in constant pain. Her body seemed to shrivel… pull in on itself… her shoulders hunched up and her face pulled down until it was like a mask. Her hands were like birds’ feet. I had to feed her sometimes. I hated it, but I did it and never said boo about it. When the pain got bad enough, they started giving her drugs—mild ones at first and then ones that would have left her a junkie if she had lived. But of course everyone knew she wasn’t going to live. I guess that’s why she’s such a… secret to all of us. Because we wanted her to die, Louis, we wished for her to die, and it wasn’t just so she wouldn’t feel any more pain, it was so we wouldn’t feel any more pain, it was because she was starting to look like a monster, and she was starting to be a monster… oh Christ I know how awful that must sound…” She put her face in her hands. Louis touched her gently, “Rachel, it doesn’t sound awful at all.” “It does!” she cried. “It does!” “It just sounds true,” he said. “Victims of long illnesses often become demanding, unpleasant monsters. The idea of the saint-like, long-suffering patient is a big romantic fiction. By the time the first set of sores crops up on a bed-bound patient’s butt, he—or she—has started to snipe and cut and spread the misery. They can’t help it, but that doesn’t help the people in the situation.” She looked a...